Experimental performance studies of SCTP in wireless access networks

The stream control transmission protocol (SCTP) is a new general-purpose transport layer protocol developed by the IETF. Compared with TCP, SCTP has two distinct features: multi-homing and multi-stream. Our work investigates the SCTP performance in various network environments, and its availability for different applications. This paper proposes a SCTP multi-homing scheme as the transport layer solution for wireless multi-access networks, using GPRS for retransmission when WLAN connection is interfered, collided or congested. We also evaluate the transport protocol behaviors for e-commerce applications. Through the experiments based on the Linux kernel implementation, we find the SCTP scheme can provide better throughput and more robustness in wireless access networks.